T2 wins in the Andes

A short note on the race Bill and I ran this past weekend as the T2 Team: The Columbia Andes Crossing Race (www.columbiacruce.com). The race was run by over 500 teams of 2 people and was on trails for a total of 100 km starting from San Martin de los Andes in Argentina and finished over the border in Chile after going part way up the Lanin Volcano that you can see in the picture below.

The race was 38 km on day 1, 26 km on day 2, and 36 km on day 3 - camping at night on different lakes.

Running up and down some pretty big elevation changes and crossing different streams and narrows.

We wanted to be in the top of the over 80 year old category (sum of both runners) and the grueling training we did over the last couple of months paid off!... we had a 14 minute lead after day 1 and managed to win our category by 27 minutes by the end of the three days. We finished in 11th place overall - not bad for a bunch of veterans.

Hopefully I will be able to walk again soon! The memories will last a lifetime! Thanks to all for their support and encouragment. Here we are at the awards ceremony in San Martin with our trophies and prize gear from Columbia.

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

reviewed by Jim Tidd

Outliers are extraordinarily successful people. How did they do it? How much of it was talent? How much of it was intelligence? What about hard work? Gladwell has some interesting answers to these questions.

Consider the top Canadian hockey players. Most of them were born in January, February, or March. Why? Because the cutoff date for selection into the next higher level team is January 1st. A kid born on January 2 is almost a year older than a kid born Dec. 31, so he is going to play better hockey. He may not have more native talent, but he gets promoted, plays with better players, gets better coaching, and more ice time. This selection occurs every year starting at age six, and he has that same advantage every year. By the time he's a young adult, he's a better player than his younger counterpart, permanently.

To catch the PC wave, you needed to be born about 1955. Like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Scott McNealy. The key PC event was the announcement of Altair computer kit. You needed to be old enough to know what to do with it, to be able to afford it, but not already graduated from college and absorbed into the IBM workforce and family life.

10,000 hours is a magic number. By the time their opportunities came along, people like Gates and the Beatles already had their 10000 hours into what they were doing.

There is a concept called "smart enough". To work in theoretical physics, you need an I.Q. of at least 120, but beyond that it doesn't matter much. Einstein was 150. Many unknown scientists have I.Q.s well over that. So the "gifted" programs in schools are bogus because they focus on I.Q.

It's an interesting book.